“They just want the watch; they don’t want to know the time”

Every­one wants to be Nike. And I can tell you how. But it’s sim­pler than you think. It’s also hard­er than you think.

“If you want more sales, make more calls.”

“If you want to be stronger, work out more than once a month.”

And, I would add, if you want a strong brand, do your research.

Peo­ple want to skip this step because they don’t want to have to be curi­ous. They don’t know how to ask the “obvi­ous” ques­tions or ques­tion assump­tions. They just want all the answers to be there already.

I think the Cross Move­ment said it best: They just want the watch, they don’t want to know the time.

And this is under­stand­able. Most peo­ple aren’t geared to do this kind of work. They aren’t curi­ous about the hid­den truths in the brand that could make it push to the top. They don’t have any faith that there are val­ues that you can con­nect with in the mar­ket. They can’t slow down enough to study their sit­u­a­tion to see sub­tle con­nec­tions between the brand and the audi­ence. Final­ly, they don’t know how to cat­a­log and choose the best strat­e­gy to turn those sub­tle con­nec­tions into a super-valu­able, Nike-style brand rela­tion­ship.

I’m not say­ing all brands can be the size of Nike. I’m not even say­ing all brands can have such a strong rela­tion­ship. But in a world where man­u­fac­tur­ing is get­ting more effi­cient, ser­vice is the indus­try of the future. And ser­vice is a rela­tion­ship — a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with peo­ple.